Thanks, Gordon. You are too kind. You won't believe it but that little 3-element hand-held beam is still in use today (I built it over a dozen years ago). I used it Friday and Saturday while mobile in Texas for two passes of AO-51 (I keep saying I am going to replace the aging RG-8X coax, but just never get around to it). I have an FT-100 in my truck and use an MFJ duplexer to split the signal to the 70 cm beam and a 2 m vertical on the back window. I operate split mode, so it isn't the best setup--but it works (besides V/U, I can also operate V/S and L/S, using hand-held antennas out the window... and even U/V with whatever I can hear on the vertical).
I was mobile and inadvertantly stated I was in EM10, when actually I was in EM20 (too much coffee), so to the following stations, I apologize:
14.01.2011 2148 WA5KBH AO-51 M-J FM EM30
LA USA George
14.01.2011 2154 WC0X AO-51 M-J FM EM07
KS USA Larry portable
14.01.2011 2155 KD8KSN AO-51 M-J FM EN80
OH USA Zachary
15.01.2011 2354 W7VEW AO-51 M-J FM DM37
UT USA Steve
15.01.2011 2355 WA6ARA AO-51 M-J FM DM15
CA USA Michael
15.01.2011 2356 N5UXT AO-51 L/S FM EM40
LA USA Angelo
For anyone looking for an easy to build and use (did I mention cheap?) hand-held antenna for portable work, try this mirror link: http://web.archive.org/web/20071105220834rn_1/members.aol.com/k5oe/ and click on the "70 cm Handi-Tenna" link on the left frame. BTW, the young girl in the picture graduates from St. Thomas Univ this year (I told you it was old!).
73, Jerry, K5OE (also M0GOE, btw)
On Sun, 2011-01-16 at 14:42 -0500, K5OE wrote:
73, Jerry, K5OE
Hi Jerry, I built a couple of your Handi-tenna three-element yagis for 70cm, one for myself when I was getting into satellites first and a couple for other people. They work great and it's a nice repeatable design, guaranteed to work if you build it right. I've had QSOs through AO-51, SO-50 and the ISS with mine, as well as a lot of terrestrial low-power work.
Thanks for such a simple but significant contribution to amateur satellites ;-)
Gordon MM0YEQ